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Fried Meats

Fried pork coated in flour and cooked in butter or lard, finished with a hot water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Sprinkle plenty of coarse sea salt, black pepper, and sweet herbs on the fresh pork.

  2. Heat butter or lard in a skillet.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the pork quickly to avoid it becoming hard and greasy.

  2. Remove the pork and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  3. Add a little hot water, stir well, and pour the mixture over the meat while cooking.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh pork
Is the main meat that is seasoned and fried until cooked through.
Butter or lard
Conducts heat in the skillet and adds richness to the frying fat.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy when stirred in.

The step that matters

Fry the pork quickly. Frying quickly over steady heat browns the surface and keeps the meat tender. Overcooking tightens the proteins and squeezes out moisture, which makes the pork hard and dry.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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